


Atlantis Rising

by thedevilchicken



Category: National Treasure Series
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-03-02 04:27:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2799536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A deadly virus, the rise of Atlantis and a quest Ben has to keep quiet, all in time for Christmas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Atlantis Rising

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lady Anne Boleyn (Silver_Queen)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silver_Queen/gifts).



**Bimini, Bahamas  
20th December, 2008**

Ben searched underwater for hours before he found the lock. The Egyptian stone fit exactly; it even looked like it might have been quarried nearby. He pushed back the heavy coverstone, easy now unlocked, and dove into the dark.

The shaft led down deep into the bedrock; 20 metres down he lost comms with Riley. Stone-carved rooms spread warren-like from the bottom, some tiny, some immense, some great hypostyle halls of towering pillars covered in that script he couldn't read but had seen back in Cairo. 

He changed tanks twice before he found it, surfacing in the sun before diving again. Bimini was beautiful. Maybe he'd take Abigail there for the honeymoon, if he ever managed to propose; he had the ring but hadn't used it. There hadn't been time.

One paving slab was millennia younger than the rest, covered in Greek letters, out of place. Greek _numbers _, he realised, and pressed down 1882. The slab sprang up, easy to pull aside.__

__The stone he found beneath was island-shaped. The back read MARE ERYTHRAEUM._ _

__"Like the dark spot on Mars?" Riley asked, once Ben surfaced._ _

__He didn't think they'd need to find a shuttle. He had an idea._ _

__\---_ _

__**Cairo, Egypt  
17th December, 2008** _ _

__They found the second sphinx under an east bank hostel and paid off the owner to let them dig. All that remained was one paw but they didn't need much more if Cayse was right. He was. Ben vowed he'd pay shady mystics more attention in the future._ _

__The entrance lay below, beneath a huge stone slab. Their borrowed US Army soldiers dislodged it and down they went._ _

__The tunnel dropped steeply, turned sharply, led out across a vast, deep chamber. Stairs leading down sat in the centre of otherwise empty space, the stone walkway out to it almost too narrow and distinctly lacking rails, the drop deadly. Their flashlights barely lit a fraction of it. He wished Abigail were there. Treasure hunting wasn't the same without her._ _

__The wall carvings weren't hieroglyphic but earlier, like a kind of Phoenician, maybe his mom would know. The only hieroglyphs there were carved on a low stone pedestal, the glyphs a combination lock on the only item in the massive, empty room._ _

__Ben cracked the code; it wasn't hard if you knew 1882 in hieroglyphs. A drawer slid open with a stone inside, limestone shaped like an island. He almost dared to hope._ _

__"That's Puerto Rico," said one of the soldiers. He was right._ _

__So much for finding Atlantis._ _

__\---_ _

__**Washington, DC, USA  
15th December, 2008** _ _

__He was pulled into a White House bunker within a month of discovering Cíbola. He knew why, but wished the men in black had let him put on his shoes and put down his fork. He'd still been protesting around a mouthful of ramen when the car pulled away._ _

__The President asked for help and Ben couldn't refuse; it was Page 47 and he was the best man for the job. He told Riley everything, with permission, and they started to plan. Riley found his penguin-covered Christmas socks hilarious, the situation less so. Abigail had bought them for him. He missed her._ _

__Page 47 was dated 1882 and written by hand by Chester A Arthur. It read like the end of the world._ _

__A virus lived in everyone, its presence verified by secret testing, kept dormant by an ancient device of Atlantean design. The mechanism had been corrupted, it said, by looters who hadn't made it out alive; the expert estimate said by 2008 it would require repair._ _

__The virus was already emerging, cases only in the low three figures but rising steadily, almost too fast to keep the news under wraps. Abigail was affected. Ben knew he had to act, or lose her. But he did wonder who'd told the story to the President if no one had lived._ _

___Follow Cayse to the twin in denial_ , said the clue. _ _

__Edgar Cayse. Atlantis. Halls of Records. The Sphinx. The legendary _second_ sphinx. The Nile. _ _

__They were heading to Egypt._ _

__\---_ _

__**San Juan, Puerto Rico  
19th December, 2008** _ _

__They'd been in San Juan for 8 hours when Ben realised what they were really looking for._ _

___El gobernador señala el camino_ , read the verso of the Cairo stone. _The governor points the way_. Puerto Rico's first governor was Juan Ponce de León and a statue of him stood in the Plaza San José, a bronze sculpted in 1882, sculptor unknown. That had to be it. _ _

__They left Cairo. They flew to San Juan. They looked at the statue. It was pointing, but it couldn't be that easy. A call from the hospital said time was running out; this needed to be it._ _

__They pulled the statue down three hours later; government backing had its perks, even if Presidential involvement had to stay top secret. The correct compass points were set into the base and Riley made the calculation on his laptop. Ponce de León was pointing in another direction, in a straight line to Bimini._ _

__They were back to Cayse's predictions of Atlantis and in a flash Ben thought maybe the stone they'd found in Cairo came from the Bimini Road. But there was another connection there, one that tied it all together._ _

__"It's the Fountain of Youth," Ben said._ _

__It all fit, but it was easier to say than to believe. He had no other choice. He _had_ to believe._ _

__\---_ _

__**Atlantis  
21st December, 2008** _ _

__The crystal graveyard was the creepiest thing he'd ever seen, including Abigail gnawing on a hospital orderly._ _

__They landed the hired seaplane and rowed the dinghy to shore between the crystal tubes, gawking at the bodies inside. They were perfectly preserved, just like they were sleeping, their gravestones carved in that same language Ben might never understand if they succeeded. More were visible each minute. Atlantis was rising. It was rising quickly._ _

__The city stretched over the island and into the Arabian Sea, _mare erythraeum_. They'd seen it from the air, the shape of the stone from Bimini. Wide avenues led to the centre and so that was where they headed. Finding the device was simple; it was right there by the Fountain. _ _

__Ben drank. It tasted pretty good. He felt no different, but then he was pretty sure he wasn't hallucinating and was demonstrably _not_ hydrophobic._ _

__Even with his MIT degree, Ben couldn't figure how the device worked. It looked like a computer made of crystal, more Riley's area if they'd understood the symbols. Luckily, all it took was correctly reinserting a set of crystal panels followed by fleeing as Atlantis began to sink. Again._ _

__It looked like they'd had more luck than the three dead conquistadors lodged there in rudimentary diving equipment, probably the ones who'd taken the panels. Maybe Ponce de León had found the Fountain after all. Maybe he'd been the one who'd passed the story on. Ben suspected they'd never know._ _

__But they'd done it._ _

__He filled a flash with fountain water as they ran. Abigail needed a cure; this might just be it._ _

__\---_ _

__**Military Hospital, Virginia, USA  
25th December, 2008** _ _

__It turned out the Fountain of Youth wasn't magical._ _

__There was enough water left in the flask to send for testing after they'd filled Abigail's IV. The Atlanteans' long life was biochemically explained, as was the water's ability to suppress what the media was imaginatively calling "super-rabies". Ben was sure everyone affected would recover. After all, the Atlanteans had sunk their island to let the Fountain mix with the seas. They'd sunk Atlantis to save the world._ _

__He read at Abigail's bedside, went through Donnelly's 1882 tome on Atlantis, went through Cayse, went through Herodotus and wondered if the Atlanteans had really died. Herodotus said the Phoenicians had dwelt on the shores of the Erythrean Sea. He described the embalmed bodies the Macrobians kept in crystal pillars. He suspected they'd just moved on._ _

__Abigail woke on the third day, on December 25th. When she smiled and squeezed his hand, it was the best gift he could've gotten. He had the ring with him, in his pocket. He wasn't going to delay again. Maybe he couldn't tell anyone else, but he couldn't wait to tell her all about where he'd been. It was going to make a hell of a story. If she said yes, it'd make a hell of an ending._ _

__Either way, Cayce had predicted three halls. Ben had seen one in Cairo and one in Bimini. One remained undiscovered. Either way, when she was well, Abigail would go with him. Riley, too. They were family._ _

__Next stop: the Yucatán._ _

**Author's Note:**

> Some quickish notes, in case further info is of interest!
> 
> 1) Edgar Cayce predicted that three halls of records of Atlantis would be found: between the paws of the Sphinx at Giza, at Bimini in the Bahamas and in the Yucatan (see [here](http://www.edgarcayce.org/are/ancient_mysteries.aspx?id=1915).
> 
> 2) There are stories of a second sphinx existing at Giza in Egypt, and that renowned Egyptologist WM Flinders Petrie spent time looking for it to no avail! See [here](http://www.catchpenny.org/seconds.html).
> 
> 3) Juan Ponce de León was a Spanish conquistador and first governor of Puerto Rico. There is indeed a statue of Ponce de León in San Juan (see [here](http://www.virtualpuertorico.com/san-jose-plaza.php)), cast in 1882. After his death, he was associated with the quest for the Fountain of Youth and the island of Bimini in the Bahamas (see [here](http://latinamericanhistory.about.com/od/latinamericatheconquest/a/Ponce-De-Leon-And-The-Fountain-Of-Youth.htm)).
> 
> 4) Off Bimini, there is indeed a site called the Bimini Road (see [here](http://www.crystalinks.com/biminiroad.html)).
> 
> 5) In his _Histories_ , Herodotus wrote about Phoenicians originally coming from the shore of the Red Sea and Macrobians being a long-lived, exceptionally handsome people living in Africa. They kept the bodies of their dead in a crystal pillar for a year and then moved them outside the town. You can find an online copy of the histories [here](www.gutenberg.org/files/2707/2707-h/2707-h.htm)!
> 
> 6) In 1882, Ignatius L Donnelly published a book called _Atlantis: The Antediluvean World_ (online [here](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4032). Atlantis is also mentioned in the Mahatma Letters to AP Sinnett in 1882 (XXIIIb, [here](http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/mahatma/ml-23a.htm)).


End file.
